Monday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time (II)

Official Translation

Reading 1 – Jeremiah 13.1-11

The Lord says to me,
“Go and buy yourself a linen loincloth,
and put it on your loins,
and do not put it in water.”
So I bought a loincloth
according to the Lord’s word,
and put it on my loins.

The Lord’s word
came to me a second time, saying,
“Take the loincloth that you have bought,
which is on your loins,
and arise, go to the Parath,
and hide it there in a cleft of the rock.
So I went, and hid it by the Parath,
as the Lord commanded me.

After many days, the Lord said to me,
Arise, go to the Parath,
and take the loincloth from there,
which I commanded you to hide there.
Then I went to the Parath, and dug,
and took the loincloth
from the place where I had hidden it;
and behold, the loincloth was rotted,
it was profitable for nothing.

Then the Lord’s word came to me, saying,
“The Lord says, In this way I will
rot the pride of Judah,
and the great pride of Jerusalem.
This evil people, who refuse to hear my words,
who walk in the stubbornness of their heart,
and are gone after other gods to serve them,
and to worship them,
shall be as this loincloth,
which is profitable for nothing.

For as the loincloth clings to the loins of a man,
so have I caused to cling to me
the whole house of Israel
and the whole house of Judah, says the Lord;
that they may be to me a people,
and a name, and praise, and glory:
but they would not hear.

Responsorial - Deuteronomy 32.18-19, 20, 21 Resp. 18a

R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.

Of the Rock your father, you are unmindful,
and have forgotten God who gave you birth.
The Lord saw and abhorred,
because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters.

R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.

He said, “I will hide my face from them.
I will see what their end will be;
for they are a very perverse generation,
children in whom is no faithfulness.

R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.

They have moved me to jealousy with their no-God.
They have provoked me to anger with their vanities.
I will move them to jealousy a no-people.
I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.

R. You have forgotten God who gave you birth.

Gospel – Matthew 13.31-35

Jesus set another parable before them, saying,
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like
a grain of mustard seed,
which a man took, and sowed in his field;
it indeed is smaller than all seeds.
But when it is grown, it is greater than the plants,
and becomes a bush,
so that the birds of the air
come and lodge in its branches.”

He spoke another parable to them.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast,
which a woman took, and hid in three measures of flour,
until it was all leavened.”

Jesus spoke all these things in parables to the crowds;
and without a parable, he didn’t speak to them,
that it might be fulfilled,
what was spoken through the prophet, saying,
“I will open my mouth in parables;
I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.”